


After Iris...

by MrsMorgan21



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 23:14:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14579730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsMorgan21/pseuds/MrsMorgan21
Summary: Barry's relationships after Iris.OrHow Barry lost his virginity and slowly chose Mr Right.





	After Iris...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheRedHarlequin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRedHarlequin/gifts), [coldflashwavebaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldflashwavebaby/gifts), [RedHead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHead/gifts).



> First Fanfic ever posted, really excited really scared!  
> I want to Dedicate this to many in the tumblr coldflash fandom, for being such amazing writers/contributors.  
> TheRedHarlequin  
> RedHead  
> TheWonderingBlue  
> Crimson1 (Hi aunt crimson)  
> ColdFlashWave-baby  
> Craptaincold  
> and many others, but those people are the main. You guys.. have no idea how much your posts and contributions mean to me, how they keep me going. You inspire me everyday and now I have the courage to write and contribute myself. If you read this, I hope you like it!

Barry Allen… was a virgin. Up until his 20’s. It was never something he was ashamed of, really. Because he was saving himself for his one true love, the girl and now woman that he had been in love with since as long as he can remember.  
Iris West.  
God, Iris West.  
He loves her with his whole heart, whole being. Wants to have her be his first and last everything. Can’t imagine a world without her, doesn’t want to imagine a future where they don’t end up as lovers, as husband and wife.  
But then lightning strikes and things change.  
Things like Eddie and Iris being together for almost the entire time he was in a coma, Eddie and Iris moving in together, Eddie showing Barry a beautiful diamond ring…  
.  
OLIVER  
Barry is grateful, as horrible as the circumstances are, to know that Oliver will be there for him when he needs. To know that the hate he spewed under Rainbow Raiders influence doesn’t mess up all his relationships.  
But his heart is broken when Oliver gives his advice  
“Guys like us don’t get the girl”  
His last remaining hopes are crushed, because Oliver knows, Oliver has been in this years longer than Barry has, and if he says it can’t be… then what hope can he possibly have? He’s known for a while now that Iris won’t see him like he wants to, will end up wife to Eddie, Mrs. West-Thawne, not Mrs. West-Allen. And he grieves for the lost future, the lost dreams, the lost children and happy family he had planned out and tries to let go.  
.  
He’s only a little surprised when he and Oliver hook-up, both hurting and looking for someone to be intimate with.  
.  
Barry Allen may be a virgin, but he is no stranger to sex toys. He knows he likes anal sex, has even had a few fantasies of Iris with a strap-on and – NO he can’t think like that now, not when Oliver is-is-oooohhh …  
.  
And suddenly Barry isn’t a virgin anymore. Well, not completely, anyway.  
.  
Barry never tells Oliver about being a virgin, never tells him he took the one thing he was saving for Iris in a pain and lonely fueled hookup, because what’s the point? He doesn’t want Oliver to feel weird about it, doesn’t want their friend and partnership to get any more complicated that it is with the other hook ups that follow. They quickly establish that it is just hook ups, no feelings, and never when Oliver might have a chance at getting back with Felicity. Barry respects that, feels strange for a while, like they’re going behind Felicity’s back, but she did break it off…  
Time with Oliver is now split between training, talking, keeping each other up-to-date as they can and sex. And Barry likes it, feels content and important. Finds it grounding with everything going on with the Man in Yellow, the so called Reverse Flash. And doesn’t get too upset when that gets taken from him when Felicity decides Oliver is suddenly good enough for her again.  
.  
HARTLEY  
The Man in Yellow is gone, Eddie and Ronnie are gone then suddenly back, the City is still torn up, slowly getting put back together, with the help of the Flash on nights he can’t sleep. Which is to say every night.  
.  
One day, Barry decided to be a little selfish and take a break. He can’t stand being around the city anymore, feels physically sick, especially when he sees Flash Day posters and notices start popping up. He gets out, goes to a bar in a different state, different city where he knows no one and no one knows him.  
“Trouble in Flash Land?” comes the haughty question.  
Barry turns and gives Hartley a tired look, “Say it louder, I don’t think everyone heard.” He replies.  
Hartley scoffs and sits on the opposite side of the booth, taking Barry in as he looks down the length of his nose at him.  
“You look like shit for being a super hero.”  
“Oh, you sure do know how to make men blush.” Barry dryly responds.  
Hartley sniffs, and opens his mouth to say something but then the waitress is there and suddenly Barry has company for dinner and wallowing in self-pity, drinking alcohol that doesn’t affect him in any way.  
.  
They don’t speak for the rest of the meal, but both are back the next night.  
.  
One night, a few weeks later, it’s Barry’s turn to give shitty observations on how the other man looks. Hartley grimaces, and Barry decides they can’t stay out here like normal, so he takes them back to a hotel, a nice one for Hartley’s sake (and maybe just because he can splurge like that now) and cleans up his wounds.  
Hartley sits there and lets him, staring at nothing the whole time, a little lost look on his face. Barry gets him sleep clothes and gently starts to guide him to the bed. Hartley gets a resigned look on his face and stops him at the edge of the bed and turns and kisses Barry.  
It surprises Barry, so he just kind of stands there and lets it happen, which makes Hartley pull back and look at him calculatingly.  
“What was that for?”  
“Is that not what you have been going for since that second night at the bar?” Hartley asks. “Why you brought me back here tonight?”  
“No!” Barry denies, lowing his voice when Hartley flinched a little. “No, I was just trying to help…”  
Hartley huffs and replies “Men don’t just throw away money on a fancy room like this and not expect to get laid, Allen.”  
Barry scowls and shoves Hartley on to the bed, tucking him in and then grabbing a blanket for himself, laying down on the other half of the bed. He turns and faces Hartley, both frowning at the other.  
“I don’t want sex, thank you very much, but I will tell you what I do want from you, since you can’t seem to believe I’m just doing this to be nice.” Barry says.  
“Oh?” Hartley responds.  
“Come and work back at Star Labs.” Barry blurts out the first thing that comes to mind, and watches as Hartley’s face shuts down. “Wells, he- he doesn’t work there anymore. Or at all. He’s… gone. And he left me the Labs in his will. I changed it so I co-own it with Caitlin and Cisco now. We want to try and get it up and running again, as a research Lab or maybe an outreach program for metas and the public, have it be a place they can learn to control their powers and know they are safe there.” He rushes out before Hartley can say anything.  
Hartley stares at him a bit longer, expression unreadable, then says “We will see.”  
.  
He shows up at the labs a few days later, and immediately starts antagonizing Team Flash.  
.  
Barry and Hartley have sex in the office where Eobard once sat and ruined their lives. It’s not the only time they have sex there, but it is the only place outside Hartley’s apartment that Barry will allow them to have sex in. And only when they know the others are gone and not coming back for a while.  
And there goes the rest of Barry’s virginity, and in trade he gets some Kinks he never though he’d ever have but well…  
.  
PATTY SPIVOT  
Patty is the first girl who has caught his attention in a while, since Linda really. Patty is smart and funny and interested in Barry as Barry Allen. She is amazed and awed by plain old Barry, CSI for the CCPD, not the Flash, not a metahuman, just Barry.  
And Barry loves it. Loves it so much. He doesn’t have to be brave and strong all the time, because Patty doesn’t expect him to be. There are no expectations with her because she doesn’t know.  
She doesn’t know he’s the Flash  
The one thing that made this relationship work in the first place is the one that makes it fall apart. He doesn’t want to keep lying but then Zoom enters and endangers Linda and he can’t keep Patty here, can’t ask her to put a hold on her life, waiting for a time when he feels she can be safe dating him again.  
It’s not fair to either of them, he thinks and lets her go.  
Lets her go, knowing she knows anyway, but unwilling to keep her waiting.  
.  
LEO AND RAY  
Barry always knew he found Snart attractive, even those first encounters with the Khandaq Dynasty Diamond, or when he kidnapped Caitlin and later Cisco and Dante. Which is why it is no surprise he finds Leo attractive. Snart’s looks and some mannerisms, wrapped up in more open and expressive personality? Yeah, he’s gone on Leo. But Leo takes off with the legends and Ray is left alone to deal with his world, and well Barry certainly has nothing better to do, so he starts Universe hopping at least once a week to check up on Ray and give help where he can.  
He helps train with the Freedom Fighters, helps take down what is left of the Nazi regime on Earth X and patches the Freedom Fighters up when they get hurt. And at the end of the day, he follows Ray home and helps with cooking and house work.  
.  
Pretty soon he’s over there most of the time and is so fucking screwed because he wants. Wants this lovely, domestic setting they have going on, wants it to never end, wants it to get more intimate, but knows it can’t because he’s seen the way Leo and Ray looked at each other and knows he can’t break that up, doesn’t really want to. But sometimes he thinks he sees Ray looking at him, wanting him just as much, but he doesn’t say or change anything, so Barry chalks it up to projection and tries to move on.  
But then Leo comes back from his stint with the Legends, when Barry and Ray are eating dinner and laughing, joking, and something passes over his face that Barry doesn’t really like.  
.  
He gets out of there fast and doesn’t come back.  
.  
It takes a few days for Ray and Leo to come to his earth and find him. He’s with Hartley in the office, going over paperwork for the Labs when Leo storms in, Ray trailing behind. Barry looks up and freezes, while Hartley laughs and leaves Barry to his fate.  
.  
Leo and Ray become the Second and Third people to have sex with him in the Labs office.  
.  
Barry is rather happy to be a Third he finds out. Dates are always fun and new, and they always make sure to spend time in twos and not just always the three of them. Those dates, Barry doesn’t like as much. The more time he spends one-on-one, learning about Leo, the more he wonders about his own Snart. Sick of himself for wanting something he can’t have, will never have a chance of having. So mad that he is pinning for someone he can never have when he has two perfectly good, loving boyfriends right here.  
.  
They date for a good half a year before a breach violently opens up and spits out a confused Len Snart, and everything promptly goes to hell.  
.  
LEN SNART  
Barry’s found Snart attractive since day one of their encounters. Those eyes, that jawline, his brain… he could go on. And on. But Snart kind of ruined it with the whole killing a man to test his speed and his gun, then later by kidnapping Caitlin and strapping her to a bomb, and then oh boy he really ruined it when he betrayed Team Flash and set the metas lose on the city once again. The fucking asshole.  
The Cisco Kidnapping wasn’t the best either but better than Joe dying and having the city wiped off the map by Mardon, so he lets it go, reassures Cisco that he isn’t upset at him, that he would have made the same decision if it had been him and Iris.  
Which stops him short. He hasn’t romantically thought about Iris in a awhile now, he realizes. He will never think of her as a sister, but the whole, consuming love he once held for her, has lessened, has stopped hurting him and taking up so much of him. It will probably never go away completely, he will always love Iris, she will always be important and someone who he puts first, but now… he can start moving forward.  
With those thought racing around, he goes to track down Snart and ends up hashing out a deal.  
Just because it isn’t romantic love, doesn’t mean he will tolerate anyone coming for his loved ones, Iris especially.  
.  
Things start changing a bit when Lisa purposefully bumps into Cisco while they were at Jitters, asking for the Flashes help.  
.  
To be honest, he pretty much forgot any mention of Lewis being abusive to his children, because Leonard and Lisa seem so invincible, it’s hard to imagine them as anything else. But then Lisa shows them her scar, looking very vulnerable, and he meets Leonard at Saints and Sinner and he looks defeated, scared and lost and Barry aches. Remembers his own parents and can’t imagine how awful it must have been, realizing the people who were supposed to love you unconditionally, hurt you again and again, and used you for their own gain, to make themselves feel powerful.  
Something inside Barry breaks when Leonard doesn’t shoot him right after his father commands it, that he trusts Barry and his team with his sister’s life enough to hesitate pulling the trigger of his Cold Gun.  
.  
He feels bad about Snart ending up in Jail, and hopes he understands when he goes to see him, even after the first time. He kinda likes knowing Leonard will see him when he comes, and starts looking forward to each visit even if Barry is the one who does most of the talking. Except for the conversation they had about names.  
“Call me Len or I’ll start calling you Bartholomew, kid”  
Then Christmas time rolls around and Len is in Joes house, being an over dramatic ass, with hot chocolate and a roaring fire, warning him about Mardon and Jesse, but not wanting to get more involved than that.  
.  
“Merry Christmas Barry” Haunts him for a very long time.  
.  
Getting called back from Earth X, or where ever he is at the time, to deal with a breach is something Barry is slowly getting used to. Getting called back to deal with a violent opening that spits out his supposed-to-be-dead favorite Nemesis is…not.  
.  
Caitlin makes Len, and by extension Lisa, who hasn’t left her brothers side since Cisco called and told her, stay at the Labs for a week to do checkups and monitoring. Len isn’t always all the way there, which is understandable as he was torn to atoms and tossed through god knows how many timelines. The human brain just can’t handle all the knowledge Len now has and its taking a toll. Barry can relate, in a way, understanding coming from his time in the Speed Force, being one with the universe and all of time, then so suddenly thrown back into a human body with human limits. So Barry hasn’t really left the labs in a week either, electing to stay with the Snart siblings, trying to bring Len back to human constraints in a much nicer way than Barry’s experience.  
The combined forces of Team Flash and a loving sister make it so Len is in control more times than not, and has ways of getting out of his visions of the different time lines, by the end of the week. He isn’t magically the same person he was before he left, or even before he blew himself up, but nobody really expects that and it makes things easier for Len. Because he doesn’t have to be 100% all of the time, doesn’t even always need to be 50%. He just needs to try.  
.  
“We should talk.” Leo says.  
Barry is sitting between Ray and Leo on the sofa of his apartment, trying to watch a movie but his thoughts keep straying to Len and what he might be doing now that he doesn’t need to stop by the Labs anymore. He’s worried and a little hurt, as soon as Len was cleared, he packed up with Lisa and left the city with hardly a good-bye. The only reason they know is because Lisa sends Cisco short updates every evening, telling them how the day went and where Len is in his recoveries and adaptations.  
Barry turns and looks at Leo, brows furrowing as he tilts his head to the side, gesturing for him to continue.  
“You told us your earths Snart was back among the living,” Ray starts off.  
“We wanted to see how you were taking that, especially since this is the first time we’ve seen our boyfriend in three weeks.” Leo finishes, moving so his back is leaning against the arm of the couch, facing Barry and Ray.  
Barry winces, “I’m sorry about that, it’s just I know what it’s like to be released and then shoved back into human constraints, so I thought it would be best if I was here. Ready to help.” But he can’t meet Leo’s eyes and is looking at the table, miserable and angry. Out of his peripheral, he sees Leo look over him to Ray, his husband now, and Ray must do something because Leo sighs and turns back to Barry.  
“We didn’t ask for a summary of events or the reasons you made up to yourself to stay by his side, we want to know how your feeling, how your dealing with all this.” Ray says softly.  
“We may be your boyfriends right now, but we were friends first.” Leo states.  
And Barry loses it, collapsing in on himself, sobbing and apologizing to them both for doing this to them, dragging them on, taking advantage of them. All the self-hatred he felt about being with them and loving them but wondering and pinning for his Len. How he sometimes wonders if he was using Leo as some sort of replacement, or fantasy for what might have been if he hadn’t been so pushy for Len to change, to embrace his inner Hero.  
Leo stops him there, tells him he might be right, but he was also wrong. “You can’t pretend or make up what I know you feel for us. I know you love us because I’ve seen it. Ray has seen it. You might wish for another man with my body, but you love me as Leo. Not as Len. And that’s okay, love. We understand.”  
Ray pulls him back into his chest, Leo moving forward and laying his face in the crook of Barry’s neck, relaxing his body against those of his two lovers.  
“And don’t think for one second that Len sacrificing himself was on you at all.” Ray says. “If he is anything like our Leonard, he doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to. He would hate to hear you blame yourself and diminish his choice to save Mick, Ray and the rest of the Legends. He might have gotten onto that ship because of your belief in him, but he died because he chose himself over Mick.”  
They lay like that for a while, letting Barry soak everything in, Ray and Leo cherishing these last few intimate moments before the breakup.  
“Have you talked to Len about that? About your guilt over his death, or even wanting him back? Wanting him as a Partner?” Leo asks softly.  
“No.” Barry states firmly. “The state he was in during the first week, I didn’t want to risk anything by bringing his death up more than we had to. And he already doesn’t handle emotions well… and then when he was better, he left before we could talk about anything, let alone something so heavy.”  
“You should. Talk to him about it all. See what he wants. We love you Barry, and we don’t want to trap you, to make you feel like you should stay with us and not go and figure things out now that Len is back. Try it, see how it goes, and if it goes south, then we will be here with open arms, in any way you want us.” Leo says.  
“Like Leo said before, we were friends first, and we can be friends again.” Ray whispers.  
“Okay…” Barry whispers back. “I will. But tonight… can we just… go to bed and hold each other?”  
“Sounds like a plan Barry.”  
.  
Barry tracks the Snart siblings down a few days later. It only took so long because they weren’t even on the same freaking continent anymore.  
He doesn’t want to corner Len, doesn’t want to pressure him into anything or freak him out and make him disappear for good. So he stays, hangs around and gets to know Lisa and Len better in different settings than he’s used to. Gets to know the softer sides, the funny sides, the sad sides. More than just the characters they play up during heists or jobs. And not for the first time, it really hits him, how little he knows about the man he’s been pinning over for years.  
He treasures every new thing he learns, keeps it close to his heart, and doesn’t want to let them go, doesn’t want to share these facts with other people.  
.  
Len brings it up first. They’re walking along the beach, slow and meandering, letting the waves crash into their feet and the glow of the sunset warm them.  
“Why are you here, Barry?” He asks, stopping and looking out at the ocean.  
Barry sidles up next to him, close enough their hands brush and so he grabs Len hand, intertwining their fingers, palms warm against each other.  
“This.” Barry replies softly. “I want to try life with you. I want to see if we can be happy together, to chose you every morning and every night. To chose each other through the ups and downs of the rest of our lives.”  
Len turns to him, vulnerable but hopeful and whispers out “Okay” and smiles softly at him. Barry smiles back, leans in a bit and brushes his lips softly against Lens check. Pulling back their gazes are soft, expressions hopeful but serious. They nod at each other and turn to watch the sun sink below the horizon. Together.  
.  
.  
.  
It’s not perfect, not a fairytale, romance book ending, no dreams of grandeur. But it is them, and its enough.


End file.
